And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

Italics in original. If this is a bluff… well. Every time somebody thought that Andrew Breitbart has been bluffing on the ACORN scandal, he’s turned out not to be. The latest one has Patterico almost gibbering in glee as he rakes the LA Times and James Rainey over the coals for their uncritical willingness to believe Lavelle Stewart; it doesn’t seem particularly safe to hope that this time is the time that Breitbart’s got nothing left.

AG Holder has to investigate this. It’s clear that there’s something rotten at the core of ACORN – and while that may be a politically sensitive issue for the administration, that’s the administration’s problem and nobody else’s. The longer this goes on, the worse it’s going to be for the White House when it finally gets faced… and if this becomes an electoral issue in 2010, it will be faced. If only because a large section of the new Congress successfully campaigned on the promise that they would get to the bottom of this.

Principle over party, Attorney General. Or your party gets hammered. Your call. Speaking as a Republican, I hope that you try to keep stonewalling; speaking as an American (which takes precedence), I suggest that you don’t.